Forty years in South China : the life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D.

Front matter

ASIA

CHARLES WILLIAM WASON

COLLECTION

Introduction

BY REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

Too near was I to the subject of this biography to write an impartial introduction. When John Van Nest Talmage went, my last brother went. Stunned until I staggered through the corridors of the hotel in London, England, when the news came that John was dead. If I should say all that I felt I would declare that since Paul the great apostle to the Gentiles, a more faithful or consecrated man has not lifted his voice in the dark places of heathenism. I said it while he was alive, and might as well say it now that he is dead. " He was the hero of our family." He did not go to a far-off land to preach because people in America did not want to hear him preach. At the time of his first going to China he had a call to succeed Rev. Dr. Brodhead, of Brooklyn, the Chrysostom of the American pulpit, a call with a large salary, and there would not have been anything impossible to him in the matters of religious work or Christian achievement had he tarried in his native land. But. nothing

Introduction.

could detain him from the work to which God called him years before he became a Christian. My reason for writing that anomalous statement is that when a boy in Sabbath-school at Boundbrook, New Jersey, he read a Library book, entitled " The Life of Henry Martyn, the Missionary," and he said to our mother, " Mother 1 when I grow up I am going to be a missionary 1 " The remark made no especial impression at the time. Years passed on before his conversion. But when the grace of God appeared to him, and he had begun his study for the ministry, he said one day, " Mother ! Do you remember that many years ago I said, ' I am going to be a missionary ' ? " She replied, " Yes ! I remember you said so." "Well," said he, "I am going to keep my promise." And how well he kept it millions of souls on earth and in heaven have long since heard. But his chief work is yet to come. We get our chronology so twisted that we come to believe that the white marble of the tomb is the mile-stone at which a good man stops, when it is only a mile-stone on a journey, the most of the miles of which are yet to be travelled.

The Dictionary which my brother prepared with more than two decades of study, the religious literature he transferred from English into Chinese, the hymns he wrote for others to sing, although him-

Introduction.

self could not sing at all, (he and I monopolizing the musical incapacity of a family in which all the rest could sing well), the missionary stations he planted, the life he lived, will widen out, and deepen and intensify through all time and all eternity.

I am glad that those competent to tell of his magnificent work have undertaken it. You could get nothing about it from him at all. Ask him a question trying to evoke what he had done for God and the church, and his lips were as tightly shut as though they had never been opened. He was animated enough when drawn out in discussion religious, educational, or political, but he had great powers of silence. I once took him to see General Grant, our reticent President. On that occasion they both seemed to do their best in the art of quietude. The great military President with his closed lips on one side of me, and my brother with his closed lips on the other side of me, I felt there was more silence in the room than I ever before knew to be crowded into the same space. It was the same kind of reticence that always came upon John when you asked him about his work. But the story has been gloriously told in the heavens by those who through his instrumentality have already reached the City of Raptures. When the roll of martyrs is called before the Throne of God,

Introduction.

the name of John Van Nest Talmage will be called. He worked himself to death in the cause of the world's evangelization. His heart, his brain, his lungs, his hands, his muscles, his nerves, all wrought for others until heart and brain, and lungs and hands, and muscles and nerves could do no more.

He sleeps in the cemetery near Somerville, New Jersey, so near father and mother that he will face them when he rises in the Resurrection of the Just, and amid a crowd of kindred now slumbering on the right of him, and on the left of him, he will feel the thrill of the Trumpet that wakes the dead.

Allelujah ! Amen !

Brooklyn, June, 1894.

Preface

The accompanying resolution of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed Church in America, November i6, 1892, explains the origin of this volume :

^'■Resolved, That the Board of Foreign Missions, being firmly convinced that a biography of the late John V. N. Talmage, D.D., for over forty years identified with the Mission at Amoy, would be of great service to the cause of Missions, heartily recommend to the family of Dr. Talmage the selection of an appropriate person to prepare such a memoir, and in case this is done, promise to render all the aid in their power in furnishing whatever facts or records may be of service to the author of the book."

The writer raised his pen to this task with hesitancy. He had known Dr. Talmage only little more than a year; long enough, indeed, to revere and love him, but not long enough to tell the story

of so rich and fruitful a life.

8 Preface.

Dr. Talmage was a man of unconscious greatness. If he could have been consulted it is doubtful whether a public record of him would have ever seen the light. His life to him would have seemed too commonplace and unworthy. He was exceedingly careful in the use of language. He could not endure exaggeration. Nothing so commanded his admiration as honesty and accuracy of statement. That ought to be sufficient to guard any one who speaks of such a man against indiscriminate eulogy.

We have endeavored as far as possible to make this memoir an autobiography. To carry out this purpose has not been without difficulties.

Dr. Talmage did not keep a continuous diary. He did not preserve complete files of his correspondence as if anticipating the needs of some possible biographer.

The author's enforced retirement from the mission field in the midst of collecting and sifting material, has been no small drawback.

It is hoped, however, that enough has been gleaned to justify publication. Sincerest thanks are due to those brethren who contributed to the concluding chapter, "In Memoriam."

If these pages may more fully acquaint the Church of Christ with a name which it should

Preface. 9

not willingly let die, and deepen interest in and hasten by the least hair-breadth the redemption of " China's Millions," the author will feel abundantly rewarded.

John G. Fagg.

Arlington, New Jersey, October i, 1894.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. {Frontispiece).

PACE

Chinese Clan-House, 26

Buddhist Temple, Amoy 64

Pagoda near Lam-sin 90

Chinese Bride and Groom, no

Traveling Equipment in South China, . .136

Pastor Iap and Family 152

The Sio ke Valley, 182

Glimpse of the Sio-ke River, . . . 206

Scene in the Hakka Region 232

Girls' School; the Talmage Manse; Woman's

School (Kolongsu, opposite Amoy), . . . 250

Pastor Iap 276

(.0)

CONTENTS,

I.- II.

— The Ancestral Home, .

PAGE

III.-

—The City of the "Elegant Gate,"

• 59

Description of Amoy and Amoy Island,

Ancestral Worship,

Infanticide,

Is Cliina to be won, and how?

. 70

IV.

Worship of the Emperor, —Light and Shade, ....

• 75 . 81

The Chiang-chiu Valley, .

Breaking and Burning of Idols,

The Chinese Boat Race and its Origin,

. 81 . . 83 . . 84

The Chinese Beggar System, .

Two Noble Men Summoned Hence,

—At the Foot of the Bamboos, .

. lOI

Opium,

Romanized Colloquial, .

Chinese Sense of Sin,

. 104 . 106 . 108

Primitive Lamps, ....

Zealous Converts, ....

. no

. 112

The Term Question,

What it Costs a Chinese to become a (

Zhristian,

. 116

Persecuted for Christ's sake, .

.■ 118

" He is only a Beggar," .

Printing under Difficulties,

. 122 ■ 125

Carrier Pigeons, . . . .

. 127

Contents

VI.— The "Little Knife" Insurrection, . . 131

How the Chinese Fight 140

VIL— The Blossoming Desert 149

I. The Ancestral Home

John Van Nest Talmage was born at Somerville, New Jersey, August i8, 1819. He was the fourth son in a family of seven brothers and five sisters.

The roots of the Talmage genealogical tree may be traced back to the year 1630, when Enos and Thomas Talmage, the progenitors of the Talmage family in North America, landed at Charlestown, Massachusetts, and afterwards settled at East Hampton, Long Island.

Dr. Lyman Beecher represents the first settlers of East Hampton as " men resolute, enterprising, acquainted with human nature, accustomed to do business, well qualified by education, circumspect, careful in dealing, friends of civil liberty, jealous of their rights, vigilant to discover, and firm to resist encroachments ; eminently pious."

In 1725 we find Daniel Talmage at Elizabethtown, New Jersey. Daniel's grandson, Thomas,

during the years between 1775 and 1834 shifts his tent to Piscataway, New Jersey, thence to New Brunswick, thence to Somerville, where the stakes are driven firmly on a farm "beautiful for situation." Thomas Talmage. was a builder by trade, and erected some of the most important courthouses and public edifices in Somerset and Middlesex Counties. He was active in the Revolutionary war, holding the rank of major. It was said of him, " His name will be held in everlasting remembrance in the churches." He was the father of seven sons and six daughters.

The third son, David T., the father of John Van Nest Talmage, was born at Piscataway, April 21, 1783. He was married to Catharine Van Nest, Dec. 10, 1803. David T. Talmage was rather migratory in his instincts. The smoke of the Talmage home now curled out from a house at Millstone, now from a homestead near Somerville, then from Gateville ; then the family ark rested for many years on the outskirts of Somerville and finally it brought up at Boundbrook, New Jersey. Though the family tent was folded several times, it was not folded for more than a day's wagonjourney before it was pitched again. The places designated are all within the range of a single New Jersey county.

In 1836 David T. Talmage was elected a member of the State Legislature and was returned three successive terms. In 1841, he was chosen high sheriff of Somerset County. Four of his sons entered the Christian ministry, James R., John Van Nest, Goyn, and Thomas De Witt. James R., the senior brother, rendered efficient service in pastorates at Pompton Plains and Blawenburgh, New Jersey, and in Brooklyn, Greenbush, and Chittenango, New York. He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Rutgers College, New Jersey, in 1864. John Van Nest gave his life to China. Goyn, a most winsome man and eloquent preacher, ministered with marked success to the churches of Niskayuna, Greenpoint, Rhinebeck, and Port Jervis, New York, and Paramus, New Jersey. He was for five years the Corresponding Secretary of the Board of Domestic Missions of the Reformed Church. Rutgers College honored herself and him by giving him the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1876.

Thomas De Witt, the youngest son, still ministers to the largest church in Protestant Christendom. What a river of blessing has flowed from that humble, cottage well-spring. The wilderness and the parched land have been made glad by it. The desert has been made to rejoice and blossom as the rose. The courses thereof have gone out into all the earth, and the tossing of its waves have been heard to the end of the world.

In November, 1865, Dr. T. De Witt Talmage preached a sermon on " The Beauty of Old Age " * from the words in Eccles. xii. 5, " The Almond Tree shall flourish." It was commemorative of his father, David T. Talmage. He says : " I have stood, for the last few days, as under the power of an enchantment. Last Friday-a-week, at eighty-three years of age, my father exchanged earth for heaven. The wheat was ripe, and it has been harvested. No painter's pencil or poet's rhythm could describe that magnificent sunsetting. It was no hurricane blast let loose ; but a gale from heaven, that drove into the dust the blossoms of that almond tree.

" There are lessons for me to learn, and also for you, for many of you knew him. The child of his old age, I come to-night to pay an humble tribute to him, who, in the hour of my birth, took me into his watchful care, and whose parental faithfulness, combined with that of my mother, was the means of bringing my erring feet to the cross, and kindling in my soul anticipations of immortal blessed-

* This sermon gives so graphic and tender a portrayal of the father of one of America's most distinguished ministerial families, that the author feels justified in making so lengthy an extract.

ness. If I failed to speak, methinks the old family Bible, that I brought home with me, would rebuke my silence, and the very walls of my youthful home would tell the story of my ingratitude. I must speak, though it be with broken utterance, and in terms which seem too strong for those of you who never had an opportunity of gathering the fruit of this luxuriant almond tree.

" First. In my father's old age was to be seen the beauty of a cheerful spirit. I never remember to have heard him make a gloomy expression. This was not because he had no conception of the pollutions of society. He abhorred everything like impurity, or fraud, *or double-dealing. He never failed to lift up his voice against sin, when he saw it. He was terrible in his indignation against wrong, and had an iron grip for the throat of him who trampled on the helpless. Better meet a lion robbed of her whelps than him, if you had been stealing the bread from the mouth of the fatherless. It required all the placidity of my mother's voice to calm him when once the mountain storm of his righteous wrath was in full blast ; while as for himself, he would submit to more imposition, and say nothing, than any man I ever knew.

" But while sensitive to the evils of society, he felt confident that all would be righted. When he prayed, you could hear in the very tones of his voice the expectation that Christ Jesus would utterly demolish all iniquity, and fill the earth with His glory. This Christian man was not a misanthrope, did not think that everything was going to ruin, considered the world a very good place to live in. He never sat moping or despondent, but took things as they were, knowing that God could and would make them better. When the heaviest surge of calamity came upon him, he met it with as cheerful a countenance as ever a bather at the beach met the incoming Atlantic, rising up on the other side of the wave stronger than when it smote him. Without ever being charged with frivolity, he sang, and whistled, and laughed. He knew about all the cheerful tunes that were ever printed in old ' New Brunswick Collection,' and the ' Shumway,' and the sweetest melodies that Thomas Hastings ever composed. I think that every pillar in the Somerville and Boundbrook churches knew his happy voice. He took the pitch of sacred song on Sabbath morning, and lost it not through all the week. I have heard him sing plowing amid the aggravations of a ' new ground,' serving writs, examining deeds, going to arrest criminals, in the house and by the way, at the barn and in the street. When the church choir would break down.

everybody looked around to see if he were not ready with Woodstock, Mount Pisgah, or Uxbridge. And when all his familiar tunes failed to express the joy of his soul, he would take up his own pen, draw five long lines across the sheet, put in the notes, and then to the tune that he called ' Boundbrook ' begin to sing:

'As when the weary trav'ler gains The height of some o'erlooking hill.

His heart revives if, 'cross the plains,

He eyes his home, tho' distant still : ,

' Thus, when the Christian pilgrim views. By faith, his mansion in the skies ; The sight his fainting strength renews. And wings his speed to reach the prize.

" 'Tis there," he says, " I am to dwell With Jesus in the realms of day : There I shall bid my cares farewell. And he will wipe my tears away." '

" But few families fell heir to so large a pile of well-studied note-books. He was ready, at proper times, for all kinds of innocent amusement. He often felt a merriment that not only touched the lips, but played upon every fibre of the body, and rolled down into the very depths of his soul, with long reverberations. No one that I ever knew understood more fully the science of a good laugh. He was not only quick to recognize hilarity when created by others, but was always ready to do his share toward making it. Before extreme old age, he could outrun and outleap any of his children. He did not hide his satisfaction at having outwalked some one who boasted of his pedestrianism, or at having been able to swing the scythe after all the rest of the harvesters had dropped from exhaustion, or at having, in legislative hall, tripped up some villanous scheme for robbing the public treasury. We never had our ears boxed, as some children I wot of, for the sin of being happy. In long winter nights it was hard to tell who enjoyed sportfulness the better, the children who romped the floor, or the parents who, with lighted countenance, looked at them. Great indulgence and leniency characterized his family rule, but the remembrance of at least one correction more emphatic than pleasing proves that he was not like Eli of old, who had wayward sons and restrained them not. In the multitude of his witticisms there were no flings at religion, no caricatures of good men, no trifling with things of eternity. His laughter was not the ' crackling of thorns under a pot,' but the merry heart that doeth good like a medicine. For this all the children of the community knew him ; and to the last day of his walking out, when they saw him coming down the lane, shouted, ' Here comes grandfather ! ' No gall, no acerbity, no hypercriticism. If there was a bright side to anything, he always saw it, and his name, in all the places where he dwelt, will long be a synonym for exhilaration of spirit.

" But whence this cheerfulness ? Some might ascribe it ail to natural disposition. No doubt there is such a thing as sunshine of temperament. God gives more brightness to the almond tree than to the cypress. While the pool putrefies under the summer sun, God slips the rill off of the rocks with a frolicsomeness that fills the mountain with echo. No doubt constitutional structure had much to do with this cheerfulness. He had, by a life of sobriety, preserved his freshness and vigor. You know that good habits are better than speaking tubes to the ear ; better than a staff to the hand ; better than lozenges to the throat ; better than warm baths to the feet ; better than bitters for the stomach. His lips had not been polluted, nor his brain befogged, by the fumes of the noxious weed that has sapped the life of whole generations, sending even ministers of the Gospel to untimely graves, over which the tombstone declared, ' Sacrificed by overwork in the Lord's vineyard,' when if the marble had not lied, it would have said, ' Killed by villanous tobacco ! ' He abhorred anything that could intoxicate, being among the first in this country to join the crusade against alcoholic beverages. When urged, during a severe sickness, to take some stimulus, he said, ' No! If I am to die, let me die sober ! ' The swill of the brewery had never been poured around the roots of this thrifty almond. To the last week of his life his ear could catch a child's whisper, and at fourscore years his eyes refused spectacles, although he would sometimes have to hold the book off on the other side of the light, as octogenarians are wont to do.

No trembling of the hands, no rheum in the eyes, no knocking together of the knees, no hobbling on crutches with what polite society terms rheumatism in the feet, but what everybody knows is nothing but gout. Death came, not to fell the gnarled trunk of a tree worm-eaten and lightning-blasted, but to hew down a Lebanon cedar, whose fall made the mountains tremble and the heavens ring. But physical health could not account for half of this sunshine. Sixty-four years ago a coal from the heavenly altar had kindled a light that shone brighter and brighter to the perfect day. Let Almighty grace for nearly three-quarters of a century triumph in a man's soul, and do you wonder that he is happy? For twice the length of your life and mine he had sat in the bower of the promises, plucking the round, ripe clusters of Eshcol. While others bit their tongues for thirst, he stood at the wells of salvation, and put his lips to the bucket that came up dripping with the fresh, cool, sparkling waters of eternal life. This joy was not that which breaks in the bursting bubble of the champagne glass, or that which is thrown out with the orange-peelings of a midnight bacchaqalia, but the joy which, planted by a Saviour's pardoning grace, mounts up higher and higher, till it breaks forth in the acclaini of the hundred and forty and four thousand who have broken their last chain and wept their last sorrow. Oh ! mighty God ! How deep, how wide, how high the joy Thou kindlest in the heart of the believer !

" Again : We behold in our father the beauty of a Christian faith.

" Let not the account of this cheerfulness give you the idea that he never had any trouble. But few men have so serious and overwhelming a lifestruggle. He went out into the world without means, and with no educational opportunity, save that which was afforded him in the winter months, in an old, dilapidated school-house, from instructors whose chief work was to collect their own salary.

Instead of postponing the marriage relation, as modern society compels a young man to postpone it, until he can earn a fortune, and be able, at commencement of the conjugal relation, to keep a companion like the lilies of the field, that toil not nor spin, though Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these — he chose an early alliance with one, who v/ould not only be able to enjoy the success of his life, but who would with her ov/n willing hands help achieve it. And so while father plowed the fields, and threshed the wheat, and broke the flax, and husked the corn, my mother stood for Solomon's portraiture, when he said, ' She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household. She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet. Her children arise up and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.' So that the Hmited estate of the New Jersey farmer never foundered on millinery establishments and confectionery shops. And though we were some years of age before we heard the trill of a piano, we knew well about the song of ' The Spinning-wheel' There were no lords, or baronets, or princes in our n

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tn ancestral line. None wore stars, cockade, or crest. There was once a family coat of arms, but we were none of us wise enough to tell its meaning. Do our best, we cannot find anything about our forerunners, except that they behaved well, came over from Wales or Holland a good while ago, and died when their time came. Some of them may have had fine equipage and caparisoned postilion, but the most of them were sure only of footmen. My father started in life belonging to the aristocracy of hard knuckles and homespun, but had this high honor that no one could despise. He was the son of a father who loved God, and kept His commandments. What is the House of Hapsburg or Stuarts, compared with being the son of the Lord God Almighty? Two eyes, two hands, and two feet, were the capital my father started with. For fifteen years an invalid, he had a fearful struggle to support his large family. Nothing but faith in God upheld him. His recital of help afforded, and deliverances wrought, was more like a romance than a reality. He walked through many a desert, but every morning had its manna, and every night its pillar of fire, and every hard rock a rod that could shatter it into crystal fountains at his feet. More than once he came to his last dollar; but right behind that last dollar he found Him who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and out of the palm of whose hand all the fowls of heaven peck their food, and who hath given to each one of His disciples a warrantable deed for the whole universe in the words, 'AH are yours.'

" The path that led him through financial straits, prepared him also for sore bereavements. The infant of days was smitten, and he laid it into the river of death with as much confidence as infant Moses was laid into the Ark of the Nile, knowing that soon from the royal palace a shining One would come to fetch it.

" In an island of the sea, among strangers, almost unattended, death came to a beloved son ; and though I remember the darkness that dropped on the household when the black-sealed letter was opened, I remember also the utterances of Christian submission.

"Another bearing his own name, just on the threshold of manhood, his heart beating high with hope, falls into the dust ; but above the cries of early widowhood and the desolation of that dark day, I hear the patriarch's prayer, commending children, and children's children, to the Divine sympathy.

" But a deeper shadow fell across the old homestead. The 'Golden Wedding' had been celebrated nine years before. My mother looked up, pushed back her spectacles, and said, ' Just think of it, father! We have been together fifty-nine years ! ' The twain stood together like two trees of the forest with interlocked branches. Their affections had taken deep root together in many a kindred grave. Side by side in life's great battle, they had fought the good fight and won the day. But death comes to unjoint this alliance. God will not any longer let her suffer mortal ailments. The reward of righteousness is ready, and it must be paid. But what tearing apart ! What rending up ! What will the aged man do without this other to lean on? Who can so well understand how to sympathize and counsel ? What voice so cheering as hers, to conduct him down the steep of old age? ' Oh,' said she in her last moments, ' father, if you and I could only go together, how pleasant it would be ! ' But the hush of death came down one autumnal afternoon, and for the first time in all my life, on my arrival at home, I received no maternal greeting, no answer of the lips, no pressure of the hand. God had taken her.

" In this overwhelming shock the patriarch stood confident, reciting the promises and attesting the Divine goodness. O, sirs, that was iaMh, faith, faith ! ' Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory! '

" Finally, I noticed that in my father's old age was to be seen the beauty of Christian activity. He had not retired from the field. He had been busy so long you could not expect him idle now. The faith I have described was not an idle expectation that sits with its hands in its pockets idly waiting, but a feeling which gathers up all the resources of the soul, and hurls them upon one grand design. He was among the first who toiled in Sabbathschools, and never failed to speak the praise of these institutions. No storm or darkness ever kept him away from prayer- meeting. In the neighborhood where he lived for years he held a devotional meeting. Oftentimes the only praying man present, before a handful of attendants, he would give out the hymn, read the lines, conduct the music, and pray. Then read the Scriptures and pray again. Then lead forth in the Doxology with an enthusiasm as if there were a thousand people present, and all the church members had been doing their duty. He went forth visiting the sick, burying the dead, collecting alms for the poor, inviting the ministers of religion tohis household, in which there was, as in the house of Shunem, a little room over the wall, with bed and candlestick for any passing Elisha. He never shuddered at the sight of a subscription paper, and not a single great cause of benevolence has arisen within the last half century which he did not bless with his beneficence. Oh, this was not a barren almond tree that blossomed. His charity was not like the bursting of the bud of a famous tree in the South that fills the whole forest with its racket ; nor was it a clumsy thing like the fruit, m some tropical clime, that crashes down, almost knocking the life out of those who gather it ; for in his case the right hand knew not what the left hand did.